Tackling the Blizzard of 2016

Snowmageddon!  Blizzard of 2016!  “Hurry before the milk, eggs and bread are gone!”  “Is my car under that mountain of snow?  Are they ever plowing our street?”  “So when are the kids going back to school?”  [Some schools will not be back in session until Monday, February 1.]

Over last weekend and the first half of this week, you heard those terms and may have experienced those scenarios.  Many of us saw over 2 feet of snow and a few of us saw close to 3 feet.  When a large segment of Interstate 70 is closed, that’s a storm that means – and shuts down – business.  Even by mid-week, a few roads and neighborhoods remain locked in by deep snow.  Getting to our places of work may have been impossible and even when we arrived, parking may have been unconventional to say the least. 

Since our roads were impassible for most vehicles on Saturday morning, it became only our 2nd cancelled gathering since 2012.  [The other was on Saturday, April 7, 2012 – one week after our 1st gathering - when our gathering area was literally sliced diagonally as services were routed underground to the Eileen Fisher location that was under construction at the time.]  Even with cancellation, I was motivated to be on location during our standard gathering time.  While I have about 25 years of experience driving in the snow – and an all-wheel-drive car – I wasn’t about to travel with a lowered BMW with all-season tires in what was expected to be a foot of snow by 8 AM on Saturday.  

What could be done?  Options were naturally very limited.  Chances were very slim.  As the storm was in its early hours on Friday, a few text messages on Facebook set in motion a plan to bring me to Hunt Valley Towne Centre.  Thanks to Chuck Heinle, President of Diamond Detail, he and his ’00 Hummer H1 arrived at my door on Saturday morning.  I knew about the hero status that the H1 received in the military world so I was very eager to experience the H1 – in its element - as a passenger.    

In ‘Closing Shots’ of this week’s newsletter and on our community’s Facebook Fan Page (www.facebook.com/HuntValleyHorsepower), you’ll see the spontaneous result of 30 minutes at Hunt Valley Towne Centre, 5 minutes at Oregon Ridge Park and 60 minutes of editing photos and videos on my iPhone.  So far, over 11,000 people have viewed the video on Facebook.  Call that a blizzard of viewers.  May that be the only kind of blizzard we see for the rest of the winter of 2016.